Main menu

Election Polling

Election Polling

Project Summary

Yuangling (Annie) Wang, a Math/Stats major, and Jason Law, a Math/Econ major, spent ten weeks analyzing message-testing data about the 2015 Marijuana Legalization Initiative in Ohio; the data were provided by Public Opinion Strategies, one of the nation's leading public opinion research firms.

The goal was to understand how statistics and machine learning might help develop microtargeting strategies for use in future campaigns.

The team used random forest and decision tree regression in an attempt to predict message response from other survey answers and various demographic factors. Some prediction power was obtained, and recommendations about future data collection techniques were discussed with the client.

Related Projects

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 calls for universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy. Researchers and practitioners around the world have responded to this call by producing a wealth of energy access data. While many data gaps still exist, are we capturing the fullest potential from the information and research we do have, and what it tells us about how to accelerate energy access? Power for All’s Platform for Energy Access Knowledge (PEAK) is an interactive knowledge platform designed to automatically curate, organize, and streamline large, growing bodies of data into digestible, sharable, and useable knowledge through automated data capture, indexing, and visualization. A team of students led by Rebekah Shirley will consult with Power for All to creatively visualize PEAK’s library, and to explore machine learning and natural language processing tools that can enable auto-extraction and visualization of data for more effective science communication.

Are there relative value opportunities in the global corporate bond markets?
A team of students will work with Professor Emma Rasiel to understand whether an analysis of credit spreads on bonds issued by international firms in multiple countries over time can shed light on potential arbitrage opportunities. The team will have frequent opportunities to interact with analytics professionals at a leading financial advisory and asset management firm.

A team of students will consult with a leading financial advisory and asset management firm that is seeking to understand how big data can shed light on the secondary market for construction machinery. Students will explore a combination of publicly-available datasets that describe the used-machinery market and its potential implications as an indicator for the business cycle. There will be frequent interactions with analytical professionals from the firm.